Another June Update.........with much PRAISE!!!

Well, can you imagine after not hearing from me in over a month you are going to get TWO update letters within just a few weeks of each other???
I would like to thank you all up front for your prayers at such a time that they were so desperately needed.
I feel like the last update that I sent out didn't fully give justice to the work that I am doing here... well maybe it did at the time ... but a lot has changed in a little bit of time!
=D
It turns out the the lack of effort that was being shown by the grade 8's was not only an isolated incidence in my English class but instead it was an overall attitude in their academic lives. The day after I wrote my letter the Director of the a school, Greg Stirling another missionary out here, interrupted my class and gave a stern talking to to the students!

Now I don't know how their attitude in their other classes is going but there has been a HUGE difference in their attitude in my class... come to think of it maybe God has just blessed me with a bit more patience! ........but I have decided to make this class my project!!
The general feeling of the teachers in this school is a sense of defeat with the grade 8's everyone has sort of given up on them and is sick of all the teen angst floating around them at ALL times.

Well I have some experience with similar types of kids at my Winnipeg job where I was working with at risk kids in the foster care system as as my years serving as Councellor at Bird River Bible Camp.

It is going over great I am happy to say I have found my place in this school community!! Praise the Lord!!
I have decided to begin supplementing my English class once a week with a class on leadership and character building.

I want these kids to have a sense of pride from being the oldest in the school... as well as help them to develop a strong sense of who they are in general as well as in Christ...... All any teenager ever wants anyways is a sense of belonging... come to think of it that is all anyone wants! ........ Well they are really beginning to open up to me. It is almost as if their attitudes towards me changed over night! they Talk to me now! Yesterday i asked them what they did on the weekends and the NOT ONLY ANSWERED>>>but they did it with smiles on their faces and with enthusiasm!!!
I know that doesn't sound like much but it is HUGE! I told the other teachers and they were amazed............ all of them said that they can't get them to answer ANY questions ... school OR life related!
Praise God... that was a HUGE BATTLE TO WIN!!!!

We now joke in class and they ask me all sorts of questions............ We are getting quite close and I LOVE IT! ............I now look forward to grade 8 English everyday!
Isn't that just like God.........He takes the things that we cannot do anything about no matter how much we try in our might strength and talents............and THEN ........He shows us His solution and it is always so much better than what we were working to achieve in our own strength!

I am also going to be moving out of the Ocompos house (the family I have been living with) in 2 weeks.........
I can't even believe that at the end of those two weeks I will have been living there for 6 WEEKS! My how that time flew by........... I am so blessed to have been put in a home where the people are SO down to earth... the money thing is not so crazy to me anymore ............ I am over the initial shock.......... God is my faithful DELIVERER!

I am so blessed that even though the family has enough money that we have never had to do without anything we needed.........they do not let it define them...........

Please pray for the truth to be revealed in this situation: 500 000 guaranis (money) was stolen from a locked closet in my room which is the equivalent of $100... I am not worried about the money so much as I am about the girl who stole it!... she will get fired!

Anyways in two weeks when I move I will be moving into a house with Melissa the other short term missionary who I initially met in Ethiopia while serving there ........so long ago........ and in that house I am going to start an English club / small group with the grade 8's and I am SO excited!

I am excited to watch them grow and mature over the next few months to come!

~Kristin